Summary translation

The agriculture and food industry is an important business sector for the metropolitan area of Berlin-Brandenburg. In Brandenburg organic agriculture is especially important. However, food processing structures are underdeveloped and the potential for regional marketing of organic food has not been fully exploited yet. An analysis of the perspectives of bio marketing in classical food retailing is missing so far and could help provide further development options. In particular, independent food shops are supposed to offer interesting potential, since they are more autonomous in determining their food assortments than food retailing chains. The report presents the results of a quantitative and qualitative survey among independent food shops in Berlin and Brandenburg and places them in the context of current developments in the German market for organic food. The findings reveal that marketing of organic food is still its infancy in the considered retail channel, but store managers are very much interested in the topic and the willingness to expand activities in this area is high. However, information on available regional food is lacking and price and distribution appear to be important barriers in the short term.